


Godhead

by toujours_nigel



Category: Alexander Trilogy - Renault
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-19
Updated: 2010-03-19
Packaged: 2017-10-08 03:09:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/72063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Egypt, at Siwah, Hephaistion waits.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Godhead

He sends away all the servants, sees Alexander’s pages out, the light command Amyntor had wielded coming at last easily, and does not care that they think him eager, that they think him in the throes of desire—simpler, by far, to let them think it, and no great counterfeit. He sends them all away, and waits in the dark, dishevelled tent—the servants in the very act of putting things to rights he had dismissed, and almost their painted eyes had widened, before they shuffled out like so many white birds—like the ibis they hold sacred—the white linen a whisper against so much brown skin. He tires of waiting, body taut like a bow-string awaiting sure fingers to pluck it, ready for a battle that is late in coming, and will be no battle of limbs. Almost he calls them back, these Egyptian servants of priest and Pharaoh—Alexander is theirs, their own, as the Persians were not, beloved where they were loathed, and so easily alien, in beard and baton and fly-whisk—but something in him rebels against the thought of them. Not today, not here, in this refuge from desert sands and strange manners. Their gaze that rests so adoringly on Alexander, as easily dismisses him—they are not entrancing to him, these old dark people in their ancient, strange land, as they are to Ptolemy, as they are to Alexander, who they have hailed as their saviour, crowned as their newest Pharaoh. Who has gone to hear the words of the oracle at Siwah, for whom they have walked these many weary miles through desert and mirage, birds and snakes about them.

The tent is in near-complete darkness—two wicks lit, of nine—when Alexander returns, the light from the setting sun still in his eyes, and stumbles to a halt in the middle of it, and looks around, as though it is too blinding, to come from dusk to darkness. He rises from the still-dishevelled bed, and puts himself in the path of the searching eyes, and eyes still locked, pulls the heavy drapes of the cloak from him, and lets it fall to the floor, spilling sand. The untrimmed mane lets fall a shower of sand as he pushes it away from the eyes, and Alexander sighs like a sleepy child as he pulls him towards the bed, and begins to undress him, hands gentle, voice the soft nonsense he’d use to a spooked horse or a scared child—nursery prattling. The heavy belt comes off, the dagger pulled from its halter and stowed away, and then the chiton, letting down another shower of sand—it gets everywhere, insidious and uncomfortable—Alexander’s skin is scoured with it, rubbed raw.

He push-pull-shoves a still-pliant Alexander to the bed, and kneels to pull his sandals off, still engaged in a low-voiced complaint about the sand, the sun, the sky, everything trivial he can think of. “I have not told you,” Alexander says, voice hoarse as from centuries of disuse, “what the God said to me.” He blinks, suddenly stupid, and lowers his eyes to the feet in his lap to give himself time. The God and not an oracle. Oh, my Alexander. This is the Dionysia again.

He raises eyes to eyes that are wild with an intoxication not of wine, and kisses each foot as he pulls the sandals off. “You can tell me nothing I do not already know.” They have made you their god, son of Ammon-Ra, son of Zeus. They have left no mortal part in you save Olympias’, and hers is but little. He pushes the feet gently from his lap, and rises to help Alexander lie down, eyes anywhere save on his face. Stay fleshed, Alexander, even if you are the god the priests tell you your father was—Zeus and Ammon, and not old Philip of Macedon. Stay, for I need you, who have grown so used to reining in the dark horse that it is now harder to give him full rein. Stay, Alexander and do not step into realms where I cannot follow in pursuit.

Something of his fevered yearning must show in his face, in the shadowed, lowered eyes, for Alexander rolls to his back, to one side, leaving most of the big bed empty, and raises a hand to wrap it ’round his wrist. “Stay.”


End file.
